Frustration and disappointment is what you’re going to hear in Sault Ste. Marie over the next month after the Biden administration announced another border restriction extension on Monday.
Businesses in Sault Ste. Marie have had a decent summer season, but it’s nothing compared to when Canadians were allowed to come across the border all the way back in March of 2020.
Executive Director of the Sault Area Chamber of Commerce, Tony Haller, said they’re ready to welcome back their neighbors to the north. “When you have 80,000 people who are in Sault Ste. Marie Ontario, our neighbors, to come and take advantage of the things that we have, we look forward to seeing that,” he said.
City Commissioner Kathy Twardy, who also owns three businesses downtown, said some have even had to change the products they carry. “It’s made us change the ways that we do things here,” she said. “We’ve had to change some products, products a lot of the Canadians would come over and get, we no longer carry and we’re even seeing that in other businesses in town.”
Twardy also mentioned working with their sister city Sault Ste. Marie Ontario has been difficult. “We haven’t seen our counterparts in almost two years so that really impacts our relationship and trying to work together as cross border towns,” she said.
Twardy wonders why Canadians still can’t travel to the U.S. “We know that Canadians are doing really well as far as their vaccine amounts and there’s really, in my opinion, there’s no reason why they can’t come over here safely, do their business, do what they need to do and head back over,” she said.
Both Haller and Twardy’s confidence that this will be the last extension has gone down every day the border remains closed to Canadians.
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